First, there was the theft – then the coins stood still. For the past 10 weeks, three bitcoin address containing more than $140,000-worth of the cryptocurrency has been given more scrutiny than possibly any others on the blockchain. Now held by the hacker or hackers behind the WannaCry ransomware attack, the funds were sent by victims from more than 150 countries in an attempt to unlock their computers from the malicious encryption software. But last week, something stirred – and increments of $20,000-worth of bitcoin began moving into seven new addresses. Slowly, the three addresses that had held the attention of the world began to empty. The question was, where were the coins headed? That the subject would gain such attention perhaps isn’t surprising. At the time of the incident in May, WannaCry attracted global headlines, and bitcoin got a share of the blame. As bitcoin’s value grew over the course of the year, and as it attracted a new class of investors, the incident emerged as a black mark – the latest reminder of how the technology can be used to nefarious ends. “There’s an implication that [blockchains] are well-suited for criminal activity,” said Andrew Poelstra, a mathematician at Blockstream. “Because blockchains make it cheaper to …

The holiday season is a time for shopping for gifts, spending time with family and for some, hacking into the San Francisco subway system. In fact, many, many computer systems in San Francisco were hacked this past weekend. So many, in fact, that the entire subway system has been left free to use until the computer problem is resolved. The answer will come in the form of Bitcoin, as this is what the culprits have demanded in return for putting the computer system back online. Over 2000 local computer systems affected A strain of a computer malware, known as HDDCryptor, hit 2,112 computers within the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, according to correspondence with the ransomware’s masters. This has affected the railway system starting on Friday evening, continuing throughout Saturday, and as of Sunday night, there has been no news of a resolution. CBS affiliate KPIX in San Francisco, says sources inside of the city’s transit agency told them on Saturday that the system was hacked days ago. Payment kiosks are out of service and cards can not be purchased. “There’s no impact to the transit service, but we have opened the fare gates as a precaution to minimize customer …

Bitcoin has jumped in price again. Following a near two-week excursion down south, bitcoin has hit a detour and is now hovering at $581 as of press time. That’s a near $10 rise since our previous price piece. However, the price is still down overall. Although many factors may be contributing to bitcoin’s slight slump, many seem to believe that ransomware poses a particularly nasty threat to the currency’s future. Bitcoin-Related Ransomware on the Rise In one of our more recent articles, bitcoin’s competition with the U.S. dollar was presented as a potential reason behind the coin’s continual stoop. A recent analyst says that bitcoin is now holding its ground, and is “poised for more gains” in the coming weeks. The source states: “Bitcoin price earlier this past week traded a few points lower against the US Dollar. Later, it started trading in a range. While trading in a range, there was a crucial contracting triangle pattern formed on the 4-hours chart of BTC/USD. Once the range pattern completed, there was an upside move. The BTC bulls managed to break the highlighted contracting triangle pattern and took the price higher. The recent upside move looks convincing due to two reasons. …

In the past year Bitcoin started to act as the preferred form of currency to a new type of malicious software. It’s called Ransomware in general and it takes your computer files as hostage until you pay the hacker who created it his ransom. And it’s evolving, fast… The first and most notorious form of ransomware requesting Bitcoin was called “CryptoLocker”. It sneaks up to your computer through innocent looking SPAM emails like this one. Attached to the email was a ZIP archive containing a small executable file (a program that runs on a Windows computer, usually ends with “.exe”). To make things even harder to detect the “.exe” file was using a document extension (i.e. “.pdf”) in the filename and displaying an Adobe Reader icon. If you chose to open the malicious file, it would download and execute Gameover ZeuS, which in turn downloads and installs other malware families including CryptoLocker. CryptoLocker will then go ahead and encrypt your computer files so you won’t have access to them without a specific private key (just like the one used in a Bitcoin wallet). Of course in order to get the private key, you’ll need to pay. This is what you’ll see on …